All Factors Should Matter! Reference Checklist for Describing Research Conditions in Pursuit of Comparable IVR Experiments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive reference checklist for describing IVR research conditions to enhance comparability and reproducibility across diverse studies in HCI and IVR fields.

Contribution

It provides a detailed, ready-to-use checklist for researchers to report hardware, software, and interaction factors in IVR experiments, improving research transparency.

Findings

The checklist covers hardware, software, and interaction factors.

Using the checklist can improve research comparability.

It facilitates better understanding of IVR experiment conditions.

Abstract

A significant problem with immersive virtual reality (IVR) experiments is the ability to compare research conditions. VR kits and IVR environments are complex and diverse but researchers from different fields, e.g. ICT, psychology, or marketing, often neglect to describe them with a level of detail sufficient to situate their research on the IVR landscape. Careful reporting of these conditions may increase the applicability of research results and their impact on the shared body of knowledge on HCI and IVR. Based on literature review, our experience, practice and a synthesis of key IVR factors, in this article we present a reference checklist for describing research conditions of IVR experiments. Including these in publications will contribute to the comparability of IVR research and help other researchers decide to what extent reported results are relevant to their own research goals. The compiled checklist is a ready-to-use reference tool and takes into account key hardware, software and human factors as well as diverse factors connected to visual, audio, tactile, and other aspects of interaction.